US Patent 7773629 Method and system for network port addressing

Method and system for routing Fibre Channel frames is provided. The includes (a) receiving a frame at a port of a switch element; (b) determining if the frame is to be routed using extended area routing; (c) if extended area routing is to be used for routing the frame, identifying a source for obtaining extension bits for expanding an area identification field (Area_ID); and (d) expanding the Area_ID field using the extension bits from the identified source. The system includes routing logic at a port of a switch element for performing the foregoing steps.